Topic: is it risky to turn all my money to bitcoins? - page 89. (Read 37348 times)
Please tell me you have 2 factor authentication enabled. People have had their money stolen and 50k loss would be pretty devastating.
I'd transfer that out as fast as you can. I'm anxious that I have 1.6 btc in btc-e, let alone 50k worth.
You have a choice of either betting $50,000 that MtGox won't get shutdown or robbed, or betting $50,000 that you can study enough about encrypted wallets to keep your bitcoins safe from hackers and hardware failures.
Neither option is risk free, and the stakes are high. Make sure you know what excatly you're buying in to!
Neither option is risk free, and the stakes are high. Make sure you know what excatly you're buying in to!
Two pieces of advice:
Use Armory and an offline wallet
Buy an old laptop that has a detachable Wifi card. Install Armory on it and pull out the Wifi card. Now run Armory and generate your offline wallet and encrypt it with a strong passphrase (so your funds are protected in case the laptop is stolen). Make a paper backup of the wallet, and put it in a separate location (safe deposit box, girl/boyfriend's apartment) to protect against the laptop dying or getting stolen. Export a watch-only wallet via a USB stick to an online computer on which Armory is installed as well. Now you can view the balance of your offline wallet using the online computer without being able to transfer money unless you sign the transaction on the offline computer.
Get your money off the exchange as fast as you can. Especially if it's Mt. Gox.
Use Armory and an offline wallet
Buy an old laptop that has a detachable Wifi card. Install Armory on it and pull out the Wifi card. Now run Armory and generate your offline wallet and encrypt it with a strong passphrase (so your funds are protected in case the laptop is stolen). Make a paper backup of the wallet, and put it in a separate location (safe deposit box, girl/boyfriend's apartment) to protect against the laptop dying or getting stolen. Export a watch-only wallet via a USB stick to an online computer on which Armory is installed as well. Now you can view the balance of your offline wallet using the online computer without being able to transfer money unless you sign the transaction on the offline computer.
Get your money off the exchange as fast as you can. Especially if it's Mt. Gox.
That is a bad move. Get your BTC out immediately into an encrypted bitcoin-qt wallet - figure out how to use paper wallets (good) or Armory (better) later.
Get them out!
Get them out!
That's insane. My main advice is to not do this in the first place. My secondary advice is to store your coins locally in bitcoin-qt - do not use any third party app like armory or electrum as the long term risks are greater. The real best idea is to use a paper wallet but make sure you really understand it because there's some risk of losing all your money if you don't understand about what happens when you send a transaction that needs change.
If you only sweep using a mobile phone then the change address issue is avoided entirely.
Armory is quite an elaborate way to step into paper wallets though don't you think? Not to mention it does not protect from the change address risk AT ALL. How can it when the problem is that payments cannot be sent from paper without managing change addresses properly. So far no-one has invented a piece of paper that can handle change addresses. My main concern with Armory is that the chance of it still existing in 10 years is nigh on zero and the chances that no exploitable bugs are ever found in it are pretty low too. bitcoin-qt has way more eyes on it and as long as bitcoin exists a compatible version of bitcoin-qt will exist.
No, I really don't. I use it myself and it's really simple if you ask me.
That's insane. My main advice is to not do this in the first place. My secondary advice is to store your coins locally in bitcoin-qt - do not use any third party app like armory or electrum as the long term risks are greater. The real best idea is to use a paper wallet but make sure you really understand it because there's some risk of losing all your money if you don't understand about what happens when you send a transaction that needs change.
If you only sweep using a mobile phone then the change address issue is avoided entirely.
Armory is quite an elaborate way to step into paper wallets though don't you think? Not to mention it does not protect from the change address risk AT ALL. How can it when the problem is that payments cannot be sent from paper without managing change addresses properly. So far no-one has invented a piece of paper that can handle change addresses. My main concern with Armory is that the chance of it still existing in 10 years is nigh on zero and the chances that no exploitable bugs are ever found in it are pretty low too. bitcoin-qt has way more eyes on it and as long as bitcoin exists a compatible version of bitcoin-qt will exist.
That's insane. My main advice is to not do this in the first place. My secondary advice is to store your coins locally in bitcoin-qt - do not use any third party app like armory or electrum as the long term risks are greater. The real best idea is to use a paper wallet but make sure you really understand it because there's some risk of losing all your money if you don't understand about what happens when you send a transaction that needs change.
If you only sweep using a mobile phone then the change address issue is avoided entirely.
Where can I read more about this change address issue?
That's insane. My main advice is to not do this in the first place. My secondary advice is to store your coins locally in bitcoin-qt - do not use any third party app like armory or electrum as the long term risks are greater. The real best idea is to use a paper wallet but make sure you really understand it because there's some risk of losing all your money if you don't understand about what happens when you send a transaction that needs change.
If you only sweep using a mobile phone then the change address issue is avoided entirely.
That's insane. My main advice is to not do this in the first place. My secondary advice is to store your coins locally in bitcoin-qt - do not use any third party app like armory or electrum as the long term risks are greater. The real best idea is to use a paper wallet but make sure you really understand it because there's some risk of losing all your money if you don't understand about what happens when you send a transaction that needs change.
Get it out NOW. There have been lots of cases where people waited too long and all the BTC were gone (exchange hacked, went down, was fraudulent...)
Why? What's the risk in generating a paper wallet private key set and transferring it to that all in one go?
If you generated the private keys on a computer with a virus you could loose them immediately, but even if you use an offline linux-live usb drive, the tool to generate the private keys could not use enough entropy. The private keys could still stay on the computer even if you delete them (undelete, swap etc...). The paper could be physically destroyed (fire?). It could be stolen by a friend or relative taking a picture with a mobile phone. And if you die, will your family know how to unlock the bitcoins ?
I lost about 14 BTC when Bitfloor got hacked
Get it out NOW. There have been lots of cases where people waited too long and all the BTC were gone (exchange hacked, went down, was fraudulent...)
Why? What's the risk in generating a paper wallet private key set and transferring it to that all in one go?
If you generated the private keys on a computer with a virus you could loose them immediately, but even if you use an offline linux-live usb drive, the tool to generate the private keys could not use enough entropy. The private keys could still stay on the computer even if you delete them (undelete, swap etc...). The paper could be physically destroyed (fire?). It could be stolen by a friend or relative taking a picture with a mobile phone. And if you die, will your family know how to unlock the bitcoins ?
Get it out NOW. There have been lots of cases where people waited too long and all the BTC were gone (exchange hacked, went down, was fraudulent...)
Why? What's the risk in generating a paper wallet private key set and transferring it to that all in one go?
is it risky to turn all my money to bitcoins? anyhow this money sits in the bank and do nothing for!
it is quite risky to turn all your money to bitcoins since bitcoin is volatile, we never know how long will it last and besides it's value is not stable you are not sure it you'd gonna earn or not.
Yes but do it right. Getting out with this amount of bitcoins is dangerous. Spend a few days working on it. I would recommend an offline client and backups of the secret keys in a vault that only you has access to.
is it risky to turn all my money to bitcoins? anyhow this money sits in the bank and do nothing for!
it is quite risky to turn all your money to bitcoins since bitcoin is volatile, we never know how long will it last and besides it's value is not stable you are not sure it you'd gonna earn or not.
Get it out NOW. There have been lots of cases where people waited too long and all the BTC were gone (exchange hacked, went down, was fraudulent...)
You've yet to figure out paperwallets?? Jesus Christ man, you invest your life savings BEFORE you do the basic research on how to properly secure them??? Please go buy a cheap netbook, load a brainwallet webpage in it, then disconnect it from the internet forever, create several paperwallets and start sending coins to them ASAP, also please enable 2FA on the exchange, disable API access, make sure the password you use is long, random and unique...my god I'm anxious thinking about it.
No kidding, it gives me the shakes... It's crazy!
You've yet to figure out paperwallets?? Jesus Christ man, you invest your life savings BEFORE you do the basic research on how to properly secure them??? Please go buy a cheap netbook, load a brainwallet webpage in it, then disconnect it from the internet forever, create several paperwallets and start sending coins to them ASAP, also please enable 2FA on the exchange, disable API access, make sure the password you use is long, random and unique...my god I'm anxious thinking about it.
is it risky to turn all my money to bitcoins? anyhow this money sits in the bank and do nothing for!
Last week, I put all my life savings into Bitcoin. I'm only 30 so I know while it is a risk, I still have a chance to recover if it crashes, and I have a full time job anyway. I just thought how the people around me are putting money into their houses, into children and expensive weddings, and they will never get a return on that. It just disappears. I also thought how most people will go their whole life and not take a risk and 'go for it'... and when I'm older, I will not be able to things like this. I will be a lot more conservative. Now is the time for me to take a risk.
So I put a total of about $50,000 USD and bought in. I don't know how long I'll keep it in, but I'm thinking at least 5 to 10 years, maybe longer. I haven't told anyone and I don't plan to, but I feel good about it. Another thing I think about is that there will only be 21 million bitcoins ever released, and that is NOTHING when I stop and think about it. To me it seems like a great opportunity.
Sorry, I would not want this to lead to anyone acting irresponsibly or doing the same, unless they put the time to study the ins and outs and know the real risks. I took a risk because I am in a good place with my job and dont have any other responsibilities with family. Only posted here since I couldnt tell me friends or family, without them killing me. Since it flies in the face of a lot of common wisdom.
I hope when you say 'life savings' you are not including your emergency fund. An emergency fund of around 6 months of expenses should be kept in as liquid a state as possible, so that it can be used right away to deal with the unexpected. Not having a proper emergency fund can do major damage to you financially if you lose your job or have an accident. Just imagine how much it would suck to be forced to sell some of your coins during a temporary low in the market, only to watch the price go back up. In short, if you don't have an emergency fund, then you have an emergency.
How do you store your loot?
For this quantity of money there is only one valid choice: buy a secondary laptop, install Ubuntu in it, install Bitcoin-Qt in it, print the private keys (or better yet, write them down manually) and store several copies in a safe, encrypt the wallet with a secure passphrase (try this), make a few more backups, then transfer most of your funds there and don't touch it until you need them.
I'd say most of the risk comes from bugs in software (look what happened to Android users), so try sticking to old and proven software whenever you can. That's why you shouldn't use Electrum (or other things like fancy hardware wallets) until it's been working for more years.
Also good on you for making a new reddit account. Someone could try to target you with social engineering or computer malware.
Thanks for the link to the Entima.net pasphrase generator.
It does not seem to work for me ( Win xp, old dell laptop, firefox 23.0.1)
I followed this direction on the webpage:
Please move your mouse around in the window to generate enough random data to construct a secure passphrase.
I did that untill the green bar went across and now it says "waiting" and the generate passphrase button seems to be not clickable. Does it just take a long while?
Thanks
I would recommend Armory for the offline wallet though. People have lost a significant number of bitcoins from doing manual paper backups using Bitcoin Qt. Armory makes sure you don't have to understand change addresses etc.
is it risky to turn all my money to bitcoins? anyhow this money sits in the bank and do nothing for!
Last week, I put all my life savings into Bitcoin. I'm only 30 so I know while it is a risk, I still have a chance to recover if it crashes, and I have a full time job anyway. I just thought how the people around me are putting money into their houses, into children and expensive weddings, and they will never get a return on that. It just disappears. I also thought how most people will go their whole life and not take a risk and 'go for it'... and when I'm older, I will not be able to things like this. I will be a lot more conservative. Now is the time for me to take a risk.
So I put a total of about $50,000 USD and bought in. I don't know how long I'll keep it in, but I'm thinking at least 5 to 10 years, maybe longer. I haven't told anyone and I don't plan to, but I feel good about it. Another thing I think about is that there will only be 21 million bitcoins ever released, and that is NOTHING when I stop and think about it. To me it seems like a great opportunity.
Sorry, I would not want this to lead to anyone acting irresponsibly or doing the same, unless they put the time to study the ins and outs and know the real risks. I took a risk because I am in a good place with my job and dont have any other responsibilities with family. Only posted here since I couldnt tell me friends or family, without them killing me. Since it flies in the face of a lot of common wisdom.
I hope when you say 'life savings' you are not including your emergency fund. An emergency fund of around 6 months of expenses should be kept in as liquid a state as possible, so that it can be used right away to deal with the unexpected. Not having a proper emergency fund can do major damage to you financially if you lose your job or have an accident. Just imagine how much it would suck to be forced to sell some of your coins during a temporary low in the market, only to watch the price go back up. In short, if you don't have an emergency fund, then you have an emergency.
How do you store your loot?
For this quantity of money there is only one valid choice: buy a secondary laptop, install Ubuntu in it, install Bitcoin-Qt in it, print the private keys (or better yet, write them down manually) and store several copies in a safe, encrypt the wallet with a secure passphrase (try this), make a few more backups, then transfer most of your funds there and don't touch it until you need them.
I'd say most of the risk comes from bugs in software (look what happened to Android users), so try sticking to old and proven software whenever you can. That's why you shouldn't use Electrum (or other things like fancy hardware wallets) until it's been working for more years.
Also good on you for making a new reddit account. Someone could try to target you with social engineering or computer malware.
Thanks for the link to the Entima.net pasphrase generator.
It does not seem to work for me ( Win xp, old dell laptop, firefox 23.0.1)
I followed this direction on the webpage:
Please move your mouse around in the window to generate enough random data to construct a secure passphrase.
I did that untill the green bar went across and now it says "waiting" and the generate passphrase button seems to be not clickable. Does it just take a long while?
Thanks
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